


Fight Up to the Surface

by Bus_Kids_Burgade (Inthemorninglight)



Series: I Won't Let Go [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 4722 au, Kid Fic, PTSD Jemma, post 3x02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 21:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8638762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inthemorninglight/pseuds/Bus_Kids_Burgade
Summary: The immediate aftermath of Jemma and Cody's rescue from Maveth. No one really thought much beyond the getting-her-back part, but jumping planets is no easy thing on the body.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the Cody 'verse where in Jemma encounters Will Daniel's nine-year-old son on Maveth instead of Will himself. Most of this could fit into cannon post 3x02 though.

Her first sensation is of being buried. Dust and rubble are in her mouth, her throat, encasing her entire body, and for seconds that stretch for years she’s sure something went wrong. They’re stuck a mile into the planet’s crust or trapped in some interminable limbo or maybe this is what it’s like to be dead.

But then Cody’s wrist twitches in her hand, and someone starts pulling her up to the surface, diggin her out. She coughs and coughs, spitting gravel and dragging in hideous, choking breaths. There are arms around her, familiar and safe, and although it’s too bright for her to see, she knows it’s him, of course it’s him. 

She might have let the blackness gathering at the corners of her eyes take her then, finally, give herself over completely now that there is nothing left to be done. But Cody’s wrist twitches again, bringing urgency flooding back through her. She twists around as much as she can, still half-buried, and begins clawing frantically at the rubble with the hand that is not holding onto him. She’s aware of voices and motion somewhere far above her head, of hands helping her dig, but nothing matters until her fingers brush his hair, until, with help, she pulls him free and he’s panting wheezing breaths against her shoulder. 

What follows is a din of chaos. Light and noise are a disorienting, suffocating torrent. Cody’s arms are locked around her neck and his high-pitched whimper is in her ear and she’s not entirely sure she’s not whimpering too. 

First the ground disappears beneath them, and they are lurching nauseatingly through icy air. Then there’s sound, thunderous and incoherent, and adrenalin is like fire in her veins. Images of  **It** still flicker in her retinas, and she writhes against the press of bodies, fending off hands that grip too tight, voices she should know but doesn’t. Her hand finds one of the homemade shivs tucked into her waistband, and then everything tunnels into blackness. 

Bobbi sits back on her heals, panting, and carefully tucks the second syringe of sedative into a disposal bag. In the wake of the silence that’s fallen, Daisy says softly, “So… who is  _ that _ ?” 

Every eye is on the child clinging fiercely to Jemma’s front even in sedation. At least, they assume it’s a child. It’s small and humanoid, but unnaturally skinny, bones jutting in hard angles. Beneath the grime its skin has a sickly pallor, almost gray. 

The questioning looks turn to Fitz. 

“I’ve no idea,” he says faintly with a shake of his head. 

With no way of knowing who this child is, where it came from, if it is human, if it is dangerous in any way, they put them in separate medical containment cells. Bobbi, dressed in a hazmat suit, takes blood and vitals from them both and starts running every test she can from the plane. Fitz hunches on a low stool beside Jemma’s cot, unable to wrench his eyes away from her face. 

It’s so familiar and so foreign all at once. The same features he knew all day every day for ten years but gaunt and hollowed, marked with new scars whose stories he doesn’t know and is afraid to hear. 

The sedative wears off halfway across the Atlantic. Jemma is groggy and confused, but when she realizes Cody is not with her, she flies into a panic. In the neighboring containment cell, he’s woken too and they can hear him, crying and struggling in the alien atmosphere. Jemma can barely stand, but she drags herself upright, beats her fists against the bulletproof glass door between their cells until her knuckles are bloody, screams his name and throws all her slight weight again and again into the glass until FItz finally opens the door with his card. 

She falls through into Cody’s cell and gathers him to her, murmuring incoherently into his hair, rocking him backward and forward until his hysterical cries slow. She reaches behind her to slam the door closed, gropes blindly for the buttons to dim the lights, and in the dark and the quiet they hold onto each other. 

The beginning is very rough. Bobbi ascertains that Cody is in fact human and neither of them are radioactive or in need of serious quarantine. She also determines, though, that they are very malnourished, severely deficient in a number of vitamins, most drastically vitamin D, suffering from oxidative stress, vertigo, hypersensitivity, and a myriad of other ailments due to new atmospheric conditions. 

They spend the first few days in a fairly sedated state to minimize the stress on their bodies - and because frankly they need the rest. Both show signs of exhaustion, neural scans that indicate a sustained period with minimal sleep. They find no less than six different types of weapons tucked away on Jemma’s person and as many in the folds of Cody’s clothes. Shivs, hand axes, spear tips, and a few homemade explosives in Jemma’s bag which they dispose of with great care. Some of the weaponry is fashioned from stone, some from a tough, reed-like material. But the shivs are definitely bone, and closer analysis confirms that they are human bones. 

No one says it aloud, but a cold, leaden dread is settling in each of them as they wonder what exactly they’re going to be met with when Jemma and Cody finally surface.   

Jemma bursts back to consciousness two days after the rescue in the throes of a nightmare, fist gripping a weapon that’s been stripped from her, mind across the universe. Fitz is there because he’s been there for forty-nine hours, asleep against the wall next to her bed. Once her silent panic runs its course and she’s checked that Cody, curled into her side, is alright (they’ve learned from the incident on the plane), she turns toward Fitz.

  
She stares at him for a very long time, wanting to touch him but seized by a paralyzing fear that he’ll dissipate like smoke through her fingers. She has been here before. She has believed she’s woken to find him (or Skye or Bobbi or Hunter or May) sitting next to her only to open her eyes and find herself in a hole in the ground of Hell. Her fingers wrap around her forearm, nails digging into the soft skin deep enough to leave red crescents, until the sting reassures her this is real.   
  
She wants to slip to the floor, abandon this too-soft bed for the sound of his even breathing, but Cody’s warmth is at her back so she stays where she is. She slides back under the covers, wraps an arm firmly around Cody to assure herself he is safe, and begins calculating the radioactive decay of each of the polymers in the ceiling tiles. So that, if this is in fact a dream, she can keep herself in it as long as possible.  


End file.
